Supporters argue jury commissioners are needed

WEST CHESTER – Supporters of county jury commissioners on Tuesday urged Chester County Commissioners not to abolish the two local positions, saying the office is needed to shield juries from political influence and public suspicion.

“Having elected officials oversee the selection process is critical to the appearance of fairness in the jury system,” said Jury Commissioner Martha Smith, the Democrat who has held the office with Republican colleagues for 13 years. “I am asking you not to invoke your power to eliminate the office … as the office has been protecting the concept of impartial juries for more than a century.”

The president of the Pennsylvania Association of Jury Commissioners, Larry Thompson, who has been vocal in his opposition to the law that gave counties the authority to abolish the offices, said jury commissioners provide a wall between political movers and impartial jurors.

“This isn’t a wall that should be torn down,” said Thompson, a former Butler County jury commissioner. “This is not the Berlin Wall. This is a wall of integrity.”

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The three county commissioners are considering a resolution to abolish the jury office under authority provided by legislation passed by the General Assembly last year and signed into law by Gov. Tom Corbett.

If the resolution is approved, the tasks now overseen by the jury commissioners will be handled by staff in the county’s Office of Court Administration who largely do the same work now.

County Commissioner Ryan Costello, who has been the driving force behind consideration of eliminating the posts, said at Tuesday’s meeting the action would save the county money it could use in “helping people” who need social services, and that it would not result in any decrease in the overall independence in the jury selection process.

The two jury commissioners cost the county slightly more than $71,000 a year combined.

Costello said he does not believe elimination of the commissioners’ posts would endanger an impartial selection process or open it up to politics.

“I don’t think a convincing case can be made that we would in any way do anything to undermine the integrity of the selection process,” he told those who came to argue for support of the current jury system.

According to information provided by officials in court administration, the current jury commissioners are largely absent from the overall work of jury selection. Of the 35 separate tasks it takes to create an annual jury pool and summon jurors to hear criminal and civil cases in Common Pleas Court, the commissioners are directly involved in only four, Court Administrator Patricia Norwood-Foden told the panel.

“We have a way to keep the functions of the jury assembly going,” she said.

The most personally involved task of the two commissioners is to decide which prospective jurors to exclude from individual pools because of hardships or illnesses and which to postpone for future selection.

Commissioner Kathi Cozzone asked Norwood-Foden and her chief deputy, Roberta Web, to provide her with information on the standard operating procedures the office would put in place to handle such decisions if the commissioners are eliminated.

The legal matter of whether the law that passed last year is constitutional is due to be heard by the state Supreme Court. It survived review by the state Commonwealth Court earlier this year, but only by one vote, 4-3, Thompson pointed out.

Some in the audience Tuesday asked the commissioners to wait until the Supreme Court makes a decision so they wouldn’t have to reverse themselves should the court rule against the law. But Costello and Chairman Terence Farrell said the commissioners must act by the end of the year if they wish to eliminate the positions, since the seats are up for election in November 2013. Neither Smith nor her GOP counterpart, Commissioner Mimi Sack, has indicated they will seek another term.

Chester County is the only third-class county in the state that has not yet voted to eliminate the position.